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Working Better Together as Team Europe Through joint programming and joint implementation Guidance
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Section 2 JP: Monitoring the implementation of joint programming

 

 

Working Better Together as Team Europe
Through joint programming and joint implementation

Guidance

A tool to help EU Delegations work better together with Member States as Team Europe and with like-minded partners and country stakeholders, through joint programming and implementation.

 

 

Monitoring the implementation of joint programming

Building on its work to strengthen policy coherence for development, the EU should better identify impacts of EU and member state policies on developing countries in its reporting, beyond actions taken.

OECD peer review, 2018

The new European Consensus on Development establishes joint monitoring and results frameworks as core elements of the joint response. This reflects the commitment to ensuring a sustainable impact in the use of resources for the SDGs, as well as to implementing development effectiveness principles such as the focus on results and transparency.

Aligning with partner countries’ statistical, monitoring and evaluation systems can provide a stronger and more trustworthy platform for subsequent policy dialogue. However, it may prove to be a challenge. UN Rapid Integrated Assessments and the Voluntary National Reviews completed to date suggest that many partner countries will not be able to report on all SDG indicators, either because some aren’t relevant, or due to insufficient reporting capacity. This highlights the importance of including support to national monitoring processes in discussions about a joint response.

Joint programming experience to date shows that the need to elevate the focus on results has become clearer. The 2017 evaluation highlighted that joint programming had not yet been translated into results at country level, a view that was shared by the OECD in its 2018 peer review of the EU.

Learning from country experience has shown that:

  • Joint results clarify the common goals and intentions of the joint programming partners, helping to raise visibility and structure policy dialogue with partner governments.
  • Linking joint results to the joint programme’s strategic objectives from the planning stage ensures credibility, transparency and accountability.
  • Reporting on a common set of results promotes European visibility, maintains momentum in strategic joint planning and enhances mutual accountability.
  • The process of developing a set of joint results is itself valuable as it facilitates consensus on underlying challenges and informs resource allocation and activity design, paving the way for thinking about how European partners can implement jointly.
  • Clear and visible results can help to identify and establish partnering arrangements with other development actors, including civil society and the private sector.

Furthermore, it has been established that high-quality results frameworks display the following features:

  • an explicit underlying logic informs the results chain and planning of activities;
  • they align to national monitoring and processes for results management;
  • they integrate European values and approaches, such as gender equality and support to civil society;
  • indicators, baselines/targets, data collection, data quality and monitoring responsibilities have been carefully considered to confirm the feasibility of joint programme monitoring;
  • monitoring is informed by partner country processes so that results reporting can contribute to policy dialogue and programming work; and
  • the results and monitoring processes are reflected in the joint communications strategy to raise visibility of European partners’ support.

 

An effective joint programme monitoring plan

Clarify the delegation of responsibilities

Monitoring of the joint programme will include tasks related to data collection and analysis, tracking implementation milestones and validating evidence. It is also necessary to identify responsibilities for aggregate reporting and analysis. These tasks should be allocated among participating Team Europe members or outsourced to ensure that monitoring work is completed in a timely manner.

Monitoring at multiple levels

European impact will be monitored mainly at a strategic level: The joint results framework should provide a picture of overall progress in achieving the joint programme objectives. These findings, often consolidated into an annual implementation report, provide the strategic level monitoring and evidence base for dialogue with government counterparts and national development actors. At this strategic level, success is determined by the ability to show attribution (or plausible contribution), perhaps requiring complementary qualitative work (evaluations and sector reviews).

Across each of the European priority sectors, a second level of monitoring is required to gauge progress against sector objectives. Sector-level dialogue, usually technical, will often be linked to other government and development partner sector working group arrangements, or could be tied to budget support indicators.

At the level of projects, European actions and investments, whether bilaterally or jointly funded, will have their own distinct monitoring processes. The higher-level indicators here should show a direct link to the joint results framework to ensure that they effectively support the implementation of the joint programme.

Evidence of progress in each of the cross-cutting issues included in the joint programme will be required at all levels of the monitoring process, where a multitude of partners can contribute (including MS agencies and development financial institutions). Considering the variety of participants monitoring the programme, it is important to simplify by keeping the number of indicators in the joint results framework to an operational minimum, focusing on those that can best inform policy dialogue.

Adding qualitative insights

Given the qualitative and quantitative nature of monitoring, it may be necessary to think about additional ways to inform the process, e.g. by ensuring expertise in specific areas such as gender and human rights. Joint missions and project visits can help provide further insights alongside specifically commissioned studies or analysis from local think tanks or research organisations.

A more formal evaluation plan could be incorporated into the joint programme outlining how scheduled evaluations by Team Europe partners — or other active partners’ public expenditure reviews, sector and budget support reviews, etc. — will be drawn on as well as identifying a specific joint programming evaluation. An important aspect of evaluations is measuring to what extent the working principles of a rights-based approach (i.e. participation, non-discrimination, accountability and transparency), as well as gender equality and women’s empowerment, have been applied in the different sectors of intervention.

Make the monitoring system greater than the sum of its parts

The EU and most MS have their own monitoring capacity. Joint programming provides an opportunity to bring this expertise together, increase collaboration and foster joint learning and more coherent sector dialogue. Insights from the collective monitoring expertise can inform analysis and joint messaging for use in communications and advocacy, while the implementation cycle should benefit from dedicated reflection and learning. Linking the technical monitoring exercise with messaging (especially for HoMs) and communications will also ensure added value, visibility and impact.

The use of management information systems

The monitoring plan may recognise the value of a joint management information system for Team Europe to easily share documents. Adapting, or directly applying, an existing system used by a participating partner is a good option. The criteria for selecting a management information system should include its ability to aid the collection, storage, analysis and reporting of information. Data sharing protocols should also be developed to ensure a consistent data standard and quality.

Using monitoring for structured policy dialogue and advocacy

Scheduled European reporting and joint programming dialogue, ideally aligned with the local government planning cycle, will maximise the visibility and influence of the European partners. A joint communications plan that includes an online European presence will help to maximise the impact of monitoring products across different media.

Monitoring reports should also identify specific issues to be taken up in dialogue with other development actors such as sub-national authorities in priority areas, civil society, parliament, academia, and other development partners.

The final set of monitoring arrangements will be determined to some extent by the decision of the EU and participating MS to replace their bilateral programme with the joint programming document and the individual reporting timelines set by Capitals for Team Europe partners. It may also be shaped by the legacy of existing monitoring systems and practices employed by the EU, MS and the wider development partner architecture.

 

Each section or chapter may be used separately to fulfil a specific need for guidance, which means there may be some overlap between the different parts of the document.

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